


The Best Disguise is Invisibility

by Adventurousmind



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: ...repeatedly, Character Study, I focused on that line and I don't know what happened, fingers slipped on the keyboard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-10
Updated: 2017-01-10
Packaged: 2018-09-16 15:43:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9278465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adventurousmind/pseuds/Adventurousmind
Summary: Kara isn't clumsy, not really. But Earth is a hard place to blend in when you don't speak the language, know the customs--oh, and you have super powers.





	

Kara Danvers isn’t clumsy.

Alex is just about the only person who both knows this, and doesn’t forget it. After all, it was Alex’s idea to _pretend_ to be clumsy.

 

It was only a week before Kara was due to start at school on Earth. The year since she'd landed on Earth had been filled by trying to understand her powers, practice English, and catch up on history and common knowledge. Eliza and Jeremiah had been helpful and willing to teach her what she needed to know, but they had real jobs too, and they needed to go back to them, not homeschool an alien teenager. Unfortunately, while Kara had quickly picked up at least most English (the language was unnecessarily complicated, and a larger vocabulary than anyone but poets needed), and her grasp of Earth history was pretty good, her powers continued to complicate things.

The Danvers had taken to buying plastic dishes in bulk, as Kara continued to accidentally shatter things. Whenever Kara grew too excited, she started to levitate. She had a tendency to freeze her dinner accidentally, blowing on it. Every once in a while, Kara lost track of her place and her hearing overwhelmed her, freezing her to the spot until someone in her new family talked her back. It was happening less and less frequently, but it was still evident, daily, that Kara wasn't quite normal. With only a week to go until high school, these incidents made Kara gasp with barely controlled panic, and Alex bury her head in her hands. Eliza and Jeremiah maintained calm faces, but Kara could hear them whisper, late at night, about their worries, which only compounded her own.

For the first time in months Kara woke from nightmares, screaming. Alex, murmuring sleepily as she clambered into bed with Kara, said it was probably stress related. She wrapped warm, human arms around the alien girl, comforting the Kryptonian as nothing else could.

It was Alex who provided the solution, too.

“Maybe you should pretend to be really clumsy,” she suggested. “That way, when something breaks, no one will suspect anything weird.”

The other three Danvers looked at her, before the adults nodded, slowly.

“That could work,” Jeremiah said.

Kara gulped. “I can try.”

The next day, Alex set up an obstacle course in the yard, where the goal was for Kara to run into everything.

 

It worked. For a while, Kara had to think about it: run into that table, drop this, find something to stumble over when she felt something give way under her grip. But then it became habit. Kara was always intensely aware of her surroundings. No one seemed to realize how hard it was to be able to run into things she knew were there, without looking, so that no one could tell she knew they were there.

After years of practice, and if it wasn’t too loud, Kara could use the sound of air currents changing as they flowed around objects to figure out what was around her.

So, after more than a decade of it, Kara was used to acting clumsy, but it was frustrating. She dropped the act in public spaces where she wasn’t likely to encounter people she knew.

In college, frustrated with the constant clumsiness, the embarrassment, the judging eyes upon her, Kara took the bus across town for dance classes. There was so much freedom in moving like that. The smooth, quick, perfectly-placed steps, the music blocking out the chaos of the city, it was a way for Kara to breathe again. It was the next best thing to flying.

She dropped it as soon as she walked in to her apartment, or Alex’s. Once she came out as Supergirl, she dropped it around Winn, too, who was always amazed at her ability to walk through the DEO without a disaster.

When she started as Supergirl, Kara found that it only added to her disguise. Her clumsiness, halting words, fidgeting, and demure clothing made most people dismiss or overlook her. Kara Danvers wasn’t someone to whom people paid much attention. They didn’t see past the glasses, the awkwardness, to see her.

 

 

Clark, on the other hand… When he’d come to National City and stumbled, dropping his armload of papers, just getting out of the elevator, Kara laughed and congratulated him on his klutzy act. He gave her a wry smile.

“Uh, yeah. No, that was actually real.”

Kara laughed quietly to herself. At least she’s better than Clark at _something_.

This is especially comforting when they go to interview Lena Luthor, and Kara is a mess. The clumsiness may be faked, but the fidgeting and stumbling over words is real. After all, English is not Kara’s first language. It’s not even her second language. There are so many words that mean just slightly different shades of the same thing, and so many of them are euphemisms, so is it any wonder that Kara rambles to make sure that what she says is actually taken the way she intends it?

Watching Clark, listening to Clark, Kara sighs. It’s been years now since Kara thought in Krytonian, then translated to English before speaking, but some of that awkwardness of translation remains, particularly when she’s nervous or upset.

This—like so many other things about Earth—is easy for Clark, talking to people like a human being. Kara wishes, not for the first time, that she had been younger when she came to Earth.

Clark was raised human. He learned English, and mannerisms, and pop culture the way any normal human did. He had time to learn about his powers. He planned for his future career. He understood human courtship and marriage. He didn’t sit through math, chemistry, and physics classes utterly bored (Krypton was lightyears ahead in education, and numbers and science are universal constants).

Sometimes, Kara envied that.

In her darkest times, Kara envied that he had no memory of Krypton. He had no memory of what they lost. His grief for his parents, and his planet, was abstract. Kara’s was definite, well defined, and sharp. She carried it with her always; that heaviest of burdens lightened only by the love of her friends and new family.

 

Kara sighs again, adjusting her glasses, and refocuses on the conversation—just in time for Ms. Luthor’s gaze to swivel toward her. Kara gulps.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to everyone who read, commented, and kudos-ed this work--and my previous one.  
> I have a lot of small headcanons for this show, so there will likely be more of these vignettes to come. But, as the new (and final!) semester starts tomorrow, they are also likely to be far between. Thanks in advance for your patience!  
> ~B


End file.
